It's An Easily-Tracked World After All. Disney Parks Are Getting RFID-Enabled 'MagicBands.'

While many people are agonizing over how closely kids are tracked online, tracking of the little ones in the offline world is taking a Mickey Mouse-sized leap forward. The New York Times reports that Disney Parks will introduce ID bracelets this spring that will make tickets, hotel keys, cash and credit cards as unnecessary for its visitors as pants are for Donald Duck.

Disney asked for FCC approval for the digital transmitters in the fall, including the photo at right in their application. Disney calls them "MagicBands" and is rolling them out as part of a vacation management system called "MyMagic+," because apparently incredible advancements in technological tracking abilities are "magical." Once loaded with visitors' personal information and credit card numbers, the bands can be used to buy things, to access hotel rooms and to get on wait line lists. Convenient! Disney will also be able to use the bands to track everything people do in the parks and personalize entertainment for them. "Orwellian!," says The Daily Kos.

Via the NYTimes, which reports the new bands may cost Disney up to $1 billion to roll out for its 30 million annual visitors:

[P]arts of MyMagic+ will allow Disney for the first time to track guest behavior in minute detail.

Did you buy a balloon? What attractions did you ride and when? Did you shake Goofy’s hand, but snub Snow White? If you fully use MyMagic+, databases will be watching, allowing Disney to refine its offerings and customize its marketing messages.

MagicBands can also be encoded with all sorts of personal details, allowing for more personalized interaction with Disney employees. Before, the employee playing Cinderella could say hello only in a general way. Now — if parents opt in — hidden sensors will read MagicBand data, providing information needed for a personalized greeting: “Hi, Angie,” the character might say without prompting. “I understand it’s your birthday.”

How many kids would wet their pants with excitement if greeted by name by a Disney princess? It's a small world after all... when the things we wear broadcast who we are and what we like. Companies are increasingly trying to come up with innovative ways to track us as closely offline as they already do online, whether it's by doing it with surveillance cameras, giving us tracking devices to wear, or by tapping into the tracking device we all already carry around.

Guests will not be forced to use the MagicBand system, and people who do try it will decide how much information to share. An online options menu, for instance, will offer various controls: Do you want park employees to know your name? Do you want Disney to send you special offers when you get home? What about during your stay?

So many possibilities: Do you want to be alerted any time someone loses their cookies on the the Tea Cup ride so you can laugh at them? Do you want the Lion King to roar every time you're near? Do you want to be pre-selected for the extra-jerky last car of the train for Space Mountain? Do you want a restraining order on Cruella De Ville? Do you want Jasmine and Ariel to fight over you?

When a Texas school proposed tracking students with RFID tags last year, at least one student objected for invasion of privacy reasons and for religious reasons, comparing the tags to the "Mark of the Beast." If similar objections are raised to Disney's "MagicBands," I do hope Disney has Belle argue in favor of the Beast's many positive qualities.